Poseidon’s MDT – Day 8: Regional Variations

I don’t think there are very many major variations of this Deity. Mostly, I think it would pertain to his role in various royal or noble houses tracing their ancestry to him, and the variable customs of phratries that worshipped him. I did, however, share some interesting epithets yesterday, which refer to a few specific regional aspects.

One of these was Petraios, referring to Poseidon draining Thessaly by striking a rock with his trident. From this, the divine horse Skyros sprang forth. This is certainly a cult that is peculiar to that location and region. For the epithet Taureios, I also referred to the Taureia festival of Ephesos, but I do not know exactly how strictly local or regional this festival or the use of the epithet is.

Geographic epithets obviously do refer to a specific place and usually have only a local or regional importance. I shared several of those yesterday. Isthmios would be an exception though, as the Isthmia were one of the Panhellenic Games. Also, local epithets could gain a wider recognition in the case of geographic epithets of particular capes that lots of ships needed to pass, or which were notoriously dangerous. So it was possible that temples to the God of that cape would be built in harbours that are not in the immediate vicinity.

I don’t really know much more in regards to regional variations of Poseidon, so I’ll end this blog post here.